The Banner Saga for PlayStation Vita Cancelled

July 19, 2017Written by Jason Dunning

Put “on the back burner” by developer Stoic in December 2015 due to cost and time, then brought back a week later after Sony partnered with them, the PlayStation Vita version of The Banner Sagahas been officially cancelled.

Writing on their website, publisher Versus Evil explained that “unfortunately, after much work and resources, we’ve decided to cancel the project and will not be bringing the Banner Saga franchise to PS Vita.” It was in development for over two years and Sony took the lead on the project, handing it off to Code Mystics, who worked on it for more than a year. “It should be stressed that the effort, time and cost had far exceeded what was budgeted by all involved,” Versus Evil added.

They continued by explaining that, ultimately, The Banner Saga just didn’t run well enough on PlayStation Vita and they all made the decision to end development:

Development on Vita was progressing well enough, but due to the various unique engine aspects of Banner Saga, we found making the game portable was not so easy.

Specifically, the unique nature of the engine work needed to get the game running on Vita required the game being playable on Vita, making it virtually impossible to do normal testing throughout the process. Once we did get the game running, we ran into significant performance snags that eventually led to the final decision; we need to suspend development. This was a hard decision to make for all parties, but it was mutual across the board.

The game needs a lot more time to get it to the conditions we expect for Vita and Banner Saga fans. To add to this, it does not include a lot of the finishing touches and updates the Stoic team has since launched on the other platforms. Essentially, it would take more time and funding to make this port a reality and despite the best efforts from multiple studios, we have all agreed that this is the best course of action for right now.